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Even after all these years, he could still look up and feel this same sense of awe. He didn’t like to let the men see him like this, but in these silent moments of solitude, when it was just him and perhaps Engomat, he was able to relax just a bit and allow himself to feel that ancient feeling. The thing he’d felt ever since he was a child.

How long would he have to live in order to see his dream fulfilled? Or to see it even approached, for that matter?

Countless times, he’d wrestled with doubt. With impossibility. But countless more times, he’d persevered. He wasn’t dead yet, much as the world might’ve wanted him to be.

And in more ways than one, perhaps.

Ah. He could see Adarius, already. That was unusual for this time of day on this side of the planet. Oh! Was that a comet?! What absurd luck!

Which one was it? He used Engomat to help rack in his brain, trying to recall the last time he’d read up on the subject. It was only a couple months ago.

Yes. He remembered reading that Ariah’s Comet was supposed to be passing by soon. Wow. How could that have slipped his mind?

Incredible.

How long had it been since the last time he’d seen Ariah like this? He wasn’t entirely sure, but it probably wasn’t more than two hundred years. Ariah was a short-period comet, after all.

His mouth hung open a little as he marveled at it. Yes, now he did remember his last viewing.

It had been just before the Breaking.

Back then, he’d been unable to think of it as anything other than a herald of the gods: a fortuitous omen sent to bless his imminent foray into death or glory.

With the benefit of hindsight and an extra hundred and fifty-or-so years under his belt, Dozer had to look back on his younger self with a bit of disdain and disappointment. He’d truly thought of himself as the center of the universe in those days, hadn’t he? A blessing from the cosmos? Laughable.

While the Breaking of Korgum had certainly left its mark on history and renewed fear of him throughout the world, in his mind it was nothing more than a pathetic failure. If only he’d been more patient. More methodical. Under him, Korgum would have become a far more beautiful nation in this modern age. Not like the cesspit it was now.